


the heavens themselves, the planets, and this center

by Casylum



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 18:50:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14775209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casylum/pseuds/Casylum
Summary: Éponine groans. "Why? Why? It's like he wants to get robbed."Gavroche smiles toothily. "Why don't you go, talk to him, and find out?""If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying something," Éponine says. "But I do know better, so I know you're trying something, and this had better not end up with any of us spaced."





	the heavens themselves, the planets, and this center

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



> for [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy) as part of [Poly Trolley 2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PolyTrolley2018)
>
>>   
> The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center  
> Observe degree, priority, and place,  
> Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,  
> Office, and custom, in all line of order.”
> 
> —Troilus and Cressida, Act I, scene iii 

Éponine Thénardier is a thief by nature and a pilot by trade; it's what makes spotting suckers so easy, especially on Rimworlds and rehash-stations like this one.

There are two kinds: fools who never believe they, in particular, can be tricked, and those naïve enough to believe no one would even try. Patron-Minette specializes in both, but prefers the latter; it's why, when she sees the pretty girl with spiraling curls and Domelight eyes talking to Mme. Thénardier, she pulls Gavroche from his path down the concourse.

"Who's this, then?" she asks with a jerk of her chin, keeping an eye out for M. Thénardier—or worse, one of Claquesous' men.

Gavroche snags a look over his shoulder, somehow making his sudden stop and her request look like something he'd intended to do all along; Éponine was just along for the ride.

"Some girl off one of the Homeworld colonies, her dad's some bigshot something-or-other," he says with a scoff, his fingers tapping out D-O-N-T on her shirtsleeve, inches away from where she's still holding his other arm. 

"She's escorting someone even worse than she is," he continues, "See? Look, over there, with Azelma."

Éponine cranes her neck. Azelma's set up on the curve of the bulkhead, the low rise creating a natural table in the station wall. A young man with copper hair is leaning over it, wearing—

"Is that solarsilk?" she hisses.

Gavroche scrubs a hand over his face and lets out the world-weary sigh of someone who has reached their limit. "Yes," he says glumly, "and he's got at least three big sparkly rocks on his hands that I'd swear are meteorshine."

Éponine groans. "Why? Why? It's like he wants to get robbed."

Gavroche smiles toothily. "Why don't you go, talk to him, and find out?"

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying something," Éponine says. "But I do know better, so I know you're trying something, and this had better not end up with any of us spaced."

Gavroche sniffs. "Have I ever—"

"Yes," she says, straightening her flight jacket and making sure the edges of her hair are even, "you have." Her voice turns serious, drops in volume. "If this is it, Gav, if this is it, you know my terms. I'll space them myself if you try and change it now."

"You think I don't know?" Gavroche says, looking like he's actually wounded by her—rightful—suspicion. "You think after all this, I'd leave any of our family with them?" He jerks his head at Mme. Thénardier. The girl is nodding her head, and something about the way the light plays over her hair is tickling the back of her mind.

Éponine shrugs and shakes it off. "It's this station, Gav, it makes us all consider doing the worst, if it means getting off."

She walks away, heading towards Azelma and the brown-eyed boy still entranced by her wares. Halfway there, the smile stretching across her face almost feels real.

~~~

Marius is nervous.

It's not a new emotion for him; he's spent most of his life on edge, looking for knives and phasers in the dark of the black, or sweet smiles and poison in solshine. The circumstances have changed, though: instead of the carefully terraformed slopes and carved towers of Île de la Cité, he's surrounded by the dull, scratched bulkheads and synthskies of an illegal rehash-station just outside the Rim. 

Marius is aware that he's almost laughably out of place. He's not entirely unfamiliar with the concept of secrecy and subtlety, but he's also painfully aware that if he had asked for plainer, simpler dress it would have been much, much worse for him and Cosette than the uncomfortable scrutiny they're currently enduring.

"Can I see that, please?" He points at the edge of a long-sleeved shirt, shaded with the blue-greens of where the sea meets the land as seen from space, peeking out of an artfully tangled pile of similar clothes. The stall-girl blinks at him. Marius smiles his best public court smile. 

"She doesn't speak Cit," a voice says from behind him, "especially not with that accent."

He turns to find a tall young woman, lean like she works for it instead of stretching in the insufficient artificial-gravity of the station, or the Seine. Her hair matches her voice, dark and a little rough around the edges, and she's wearing a flight suit that borrows bits and bobs from all over the Lutèce system, but all of it is still at least twenty cycles out of date.

Marius half-bows out of habit, flushes, and stammers out an apology in Vendée to both of them at once.

The young woman's eyebrow wings up. "Not often we get a Homeworlder, especially one talking Vendée."

Marius' cheeks burn. "I, uh, I'm good with languages," he offers, "even if I'm not great at sticking to the right one."

The stall-girl laughs, bright and overloud, like she's surprised by it. "Homeworlder or no, Éponine, if his money's good he can speak whatever he likes. His lady friend as well."

Marius instinctively looks over to where Cosette had been talking to the woman they'd been directed to. She's still there, arms folded across her chest, eyes tight with barely concealed concern. 

He knows she's been off-planet before; she'd been born in the Domes of Île Saint-Louis, and her father had been mayor of a mining settlement in the Seine for years before they'd moved to Île de la Cité. It's experience that Marius tragically lacks, and that lack has a tendency to make him feel like such dead weight. They're here, out beyond the Rim on a station that looks like it's 87% pre-Revolutionary scrap looking for her mother, looking for answers about her life, and where her father may have gone, and all Marius can do is babble to a girl in a language she doesn't even understand.

"So," the young woman—Éponine—says, glaring at the stall-girl, "what brings a pair of Homeworlders to our humble station? I thought you folk never went past the Seine."

"Um," Marius hedges, badly. He's never been good at lying; he blushes too easily, wants too obviously. "We're...traveling."

The stall-girl snorts, handing him the shirt he'd indicated. "That's obvious."

"Azelma," Éponine hisses, making a face, before it smooths out faster than would ever be natural.

Marius blinks, glances back over to Cosette, and then starts when he sees she's standing just behind Azelma, their contact next to her.

"Marius," Cosette says with a soft smile, the heat that edges his jaw every time she's near him rising behind it. "Mme. Thénardier says she and her husband may have an idea of how to help us."

"My thanks," he says with a bow, and Mme. Thénardier smiles in a way that makes the back of his neck prickle.

"Oh, it is no problem," she says, in slightly stilted Cit. "Just a few rotations, and we should have a direction for you." Her eyes narrow in a way he's half-certain is supposed to be homely and good-natured, but comes off as blatantly calculating. "You will stay with us in the meantime, yes?"

She doesn't wait for a response. "Wonderful. Éponine, please make sure our guests know where to go." Éponine bows in acquiescence, and Mme. Thénardier's smile seems to impossibly widen before she turns and sweeps back down the concourse.

~~~

"I do not like that woman," Cosette says in Vendée, dropping the posh tones of Île de la Cité for the clipped shortenings of Montreuil-sur-Mer. It feels so freeing to not have to watch her vowels anymore; Marius really is so much better at this. "My deepest and most gracious apologies if that offends you, Mademoiselles—"

"No danger of that," the stall-girl says, slanting a glance over at Éponine. "Not from either of us."

"Our mother has never been...pleasant," Éponine says with a thin smile. "To anyone."

Marius' eyebrows wing up. He's holding a shirt, Cosette notices, one that looks lovely against the sol-darkened skin of his hands. "Your...mother?"

"For our sins," the stall-girl. "I don't suppose you'd want to throw her and our equally disreputable father over and steal us away into the black, would you?"

Éponine sighs loudly and deeply. "Azelma."

"What?" Azelma looks excited, but in a way that could almost be anxious. Her hands are currently twisting a length of cloth into an unrecognizable snarl. "They've got a ship, we've got—well, not money, per se, but that's irrelevant, we've got skills, alright?"

She looks at Cosette pleadingly, words tumbling out of her in a rush. "Promise I'm good with stuff, anything you need, and Éponine's one of the best pilots in the Rim, 'cepting one guy that runs out of the ABC, and our brother Gavroche can get you anything, anything at all, and the twins—"

"Azelma." Éponine's voice is a sharp crack of sound. "What—"

"We'd love to help," Marius interrupts, quietly overriding Éponine, the low thrum of nerves Cosette is used to hearing in his voice almost gone. "But we're in trouble of our own."

Cosette nods, aware of the swinging attention the two girls are giving her and Marius. "It's a bit more abstract, a bit further off, but it's trouble enough. The killing kind."

"The kind you don't want to go into in public," Azelma notes, the twist of fabric in her hands finally resolving into a flat-folded cape.

"So," Marius continues with a nod of acknowledgement in Azelma's direction, "you're more than welcome to join us for dinner—we're on the _Nightingale_ , C-Deck, outer docks—just know that anything further might be more than you want to bring down on yourselves."

Éponine smiles sharply, and for a brief, brief second Cosette can see an echo of Mme. Thénardier in it. "You forget where we are, princess; we don't have the luxury of avoiding danger, much as we might like to."

Marius' face flushes a light pink, even as he holds steady with Éponine's black eyes. It's a bemusing mix of humility, strength, and emotion that Cosette usually only sees aimed at herself. "I just— _We_ —" he gestures at himself and Cosette "—just don't want to be complicit in making you less safe, especially since we said we'd help."

"Don't worry about us," Éponine says, "worry about how much they're going to try to bilk you out of to get enough fuel to leave this heap, because they will keep you here as long as it takes to suck you dry."

It's Cosette's turn to grin. "Don't worry, Mademoiselle. I was raised by thieves. I know how to get what I want without anyone realizing I've got it."

"So," Azelma says brightly, "dinner at seven?"

~~~

Dinner is, indeed at seven.

It's not formal: Cosette and Marius are packing supplies, they've got five more people in the _Nightingale_ than she's had since her freighter days, and there's something gone wonky with the bridge nav controls.

Their food is half-replicated, half-fresh, and is eaten out of trays on the floor of the bridge, among the debris of repairs done on a budget. Azelma's on the floor closest to the door and far away from any of the tech—"I can set fires in vacuum," she'd said solemnly, and Éponine had backed her up.

Marius had just left a few minutes before, in search of a toolbox he swears is in the engine room, and Gavroche is late, which leaves Cosette and Éponine doing any actual repairs in between bites of maybe-meat and definitely-some-kind-of-fruit-don't-ask-which while they get to know each other.

"What is that?" Cosette asks, taking a break from the half-incomprehensible tangle of wires that is the _Nightingale_ 's main communications array. 

Éponine raises an inquiring eyebrow, and Cosette points at the faintly glowing tangle of glass and wire hanging from a string around Éponine's neck. She's never seen anything quite like it; it almost looks like half-charged meteorshine, but no meteorshine she's ever seen has glowed yellow.

"Huh?" Éponine looks down, the wrench in her hand momentarily forgotten. "Oh, that's Montparnasse."

"Shot a few years ago, full blaster charge to the back of the head," Azelma confides in a low whisper. "But, he had a life recorder/memory matrix combo installed, so we should be able to, one day, get him back, Ép just needs the cash for a full-body synth."

"Éponine also needs sisters who don't go blurting out secrets to anyone born in real-G," the same mutters, ducking back in to the instrument panel.

"You love me," Azelma says in a sing-song voice, "and besides, she's a Domeworlder; the only one born in real-G on this boat is Marius."

"Honestly, no one's really sure where I was born," Cosette says absently, squinting at a bundle of blue and white cables. "I grew up on a planet halfway between the Seine and the Homeworlds though, before my father adopted me—Montfermeil, I think it was."

"Montfermeil?" Éponine sounds like she's just been gut-punched: airless and pained. "You grew up in Montfermeil?"

"Uh-huh." Cosette twists half the blue cables and rebundles them with a section of red before looking over at Éponine, who's pulled herself out of the panel she was working on. "In a house on the high street, with two other girls, until one day they disappeared, everyone I was living with, and it was just me and the housekeeper until my father came."

Éponine stands, and Cosette can see that she's almost shaking. Azelma's quiet, watching her sister with wide eyes as Cosette's brow furrows with confusion and concern. "Éponine?"

"Did my mother put you up to this?" Éponine asks, knuckles white around the wrench still in her hand. "Did she find you and tell you to do this to me? To us?"

"Huh?" Cosette's so far beyond confused. "Éponine, what are you—"

"I know who you are," Éponine hisses, "It's a different name, sure, but I remember the girl, the lark from off-world. _Euphrasie_."

Cosette blinks, and then runs cold. "No one calls me that. Not even Marius knows that name. You shouldn't know that name, not unless..."

Éponine laughs, and it's hollow, inside and out, the camaraderie they'd been building emptied out like it had never been.

Cosette swallows hard. "No, no, you must be mistaken, it can't be, the family I was with, they disappeared. And they weren't Thénardier, they were—"

"Jondrette," Azelma says distantly. "We were Jondrette, then, before Maman got in trouble."

"But," Cosette says helplessly, her mind whirling with half-faded memories of girls in solarsilk dresses and nights spent whispering secrets under covers, "You disappeared. You left me behind."

Éponine drops her wrench and leaves without a word, pushing past Marius as he reappears in the doorway, the metal still clattering long after she disappears.

~~~

Marius finds her in the top observation deck. They're pointing towards the Homeworlds right now, the small pinprick of the sol-star visible far, far off in the distance.

"I've never been," she says after a moment, the two of them standing in relative silence. "To the Homeworlds, I mean. I've been close, close enough to see the weather skid across Île de la Cité, light reflect off the Domes of Île Saint-Louis, but never close enough to land."

"She didn't do it on purpose," he says, and when she looks over at him he's considering the controls on the viewscreen. "Not then, and not now. Just like you didn't. If anything, I'd be more likely to be guilty of something like that."

Éponine snorts. She may have only known this man, this silly, ridiculous, honorable man for less than a day, but she knows good when she sees it, just like she's intimately familiar with the appearance of evil.

"No, no," Marius says with a laugh. "My grandfather was terrible, just an awful man. Not to me, which was the hardest part, but to everyone else. But...It's hard to be mad at someone who's good to you, you know?"

Éponine thinks back, before this station, before the twins, and Gavroche—before Cosette—when it was just her, Azelma, and her parents in the house on Montfermeil. "I used to," she says, "but it's been a long time since they've been good to me."

"Yeah," Marius says, "Yeah."

Silence falls back over them as the station slowly rotates to look beyond the Rim.

"Well," Éponine says, dusting her hands against her clothes even though they're clean. "I had better get going. They're not going to hold my spot forever, especially when they learn what I helped Gav and Zelma do."

"You don't have to—" Marius starts in a rush. He's still standing by the viewscreen, curiously backlit by the ambient light of the universe.

"I do, Marius. It's the only way I'll get free of all this; my parents and their schemes are too pervasive in this part of the Rim, and your girl is caught up in half of them, like it or not." Éponine's breathing hard, frustration leaking through. She turns towards the door, takes a few steps forward. It's easier to say what she has to when she's not looking at him, not reminded of what she could have; what she thought, just an hour ago, she did. "I have to do this, Marius, so just leave me to do it."

"No, you don't, and I won't. Please, trust me. Or, if not me, trust Cosette. Whatever your parents have planned, we've got no part in it." 

"Nice try, princess," Éponine says, looking back at Marius and his wide, pleading eyes, "but I don't trust anyone."

"Fine," Marius says, and he sounds desperate in a way that goes beyond his usual insecurity. "Don't trust us, whatever. Lock us in our bunks until we hit the ABC. But please, Ép, don't stay here.

"Please, Éponine. Come with us."

Somewhat to her surprise, she does.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally picked this up as a pinch-hit, then misread the dates and ended up defaulting by accident like a fool. My sincerest apologies for any resultant confusion.
> 
> Moving on!
> 
> Written from: "Maybe they have to get the heck out of France", and "make it as awkward as you need it to be, make it as uncomfortable as you need it to be; they've all well earned their happy endings", except now it's space-France, and they're just getting started. 
> 
> Some other fun facts: Les Amis are somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight (ABC, in this case, meaning "Asteroid Belt Collective" wink wonk); Valjean stole a gluten-based replicator (ahem); Javert is my second favorite space related law-enforcement body: space cops; Fantine is her own bit of mystery; long live the good space station Musain et Corinth, ever may her tricolor hull slowly turn through the black of space.
> 
> Look at this rag-tag little band, guys, they're gonna do great.


End file.
